


No. 40

by DHW



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 15:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19154047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DHW/pseuds/DHW
Summary: It sounds like the set up for a joke.  An angel and a demon get on a bus to London.There is no punchline. Just love.





	No. 40

They spoke little as the bus wound its way through the sleepy Oxfordshire streets towards the M40. There was nothing to be said; the world hadn’t ended, and there had been no great cosmic war to win. Aziraphale was as reassuringly solid as he had been the day before. Crowley, no longer quite so alone. And Adam, son of Satan no longer, was presumably tucked up in bed, Dog at his feet. Time had simply marched on, dragging the unlikely pair with it, promising unspoken futures, possibly together. 

Between angel and demon, silence reigned. The hunger they each felt was not for words. It was enough to be sat beside one another, not quite touching.

Until, suddenly, it wasn’t. 

“This isn’t the end, is it?” said Aziraphale as they passed through the Chiltern Hills. His hands were tucked away in his lap, and one leg was crossed daintily over the other. “It can’t be this easy.” 

“Shouldn’t think so,” Crowley replied, slouching further into his seat. His sunglasses had slipped, and yellow eyes could be seen peeking out from above the rims. “It never is.”

Outside, beyond the panes of toughened glass, the chalk cliffs of the Stokenchurch Gap rose in shadow around them. Over the hum of the engine, the call of an owl could be heard. 

“What do you think they’ll do?”

“No idea. But I’ll tell you this: whatever it is, it won’t be good. Defying both Heaven and Hell; that sort of thing isn’t just swept under the rug. There’ll be consequences. There always are. Very keen on consequences, your lot."

Aziraphale’s fingers twitched, crossed as they were. His body was stiff with tension. His eyes were fixed firmly ahead, carefully avoiding those of his companion. 

“They’ll send me over to your side,” he said, quietly. “I’ll Fall for this.” 

“We don’t have a side anymore, angel, remember? There’s just us.”

Just the two of them, with no side to be on, except their own. No Heaven. No Hell. Only the earth and the stars and the spaces in between; a singular plane of existence with finite parameters, where temptation was de rigueur and miracles the stuff of lottery winnings.

“Oh. Yes.” Aziraphale shifted in his seat. Crowley’s thigh brushed against his. The denim was warm. “I keep forgetting. The habits of six millennia are hard to break.”

“For the minute, at any rate.”

Aziraphale sighed heavily. “What do you want to do?”

“Right now?” Crowley replied. His head lolled back, face turned towards the window. “I want to get back to my flat, drink myself stupid, and have a little nap.”

“I really should get back to my… To my…”

Aziraphale hesitated. The bookshop was gone, now nothing more than smoke and ash and molten remains. Like Crowley’s beloved Bentley.

“The offer still stands,” said the demon, staring out into the darkness beyond the window. “It’s big enough for two.”

The flat. The bed. The world he inhabited. 

Aziraphale swallowed. “I think I’m already in enough trouble.”

“You might not have noticed, angel, but the cat’s out of the bag. After the little stunt we just pulled, fraternization is the least of our sins.”

The engine roared as the bus accelerated, overtaking a milk lorry ambling along in the left-hand lane. Headlights flashed as the bus passed. The driver, oblivious to all but the road, kept his foot pressed to the floor. 

“You know, Crowley,” said Aziraphale after a moment, “I used to think that you were sent specifically to tempt me.”

The demon laughed. 

“I’m serious,” the angel replied. “It all seemed entirely too coincidental, you and I. Rubbing along the way we did. Do.”

The press of thighs became accompanied by that of arms and elbows and sides. They seemed to sink into one another, and where they touched, it burnt. 

“That sort of thing would have required far too much imagination for those downstairs.” Crowley leant back in his seat, staring up at the lights. “They couldn’t think their way out of a plastic bag, let alone a box. Mortals are for tempting, angels are for thwarting.”

“Still…”

Aziraphale stole a glance at the demon beside him. Head thrown back, the long inches of his throat exposed, he looked almost provocative. Carnal. The sprawl of him spoke of lovers bedded upon silk sheets, and of the blasphemies that had been uttered from beneath him. 

“Surely such temptations would have been wasted upon a heavenly stalwart such as yourself?” Crowley said, tongue firmly in cheek.

Eyes ahead once more, Aziraphale swallowed drily and intoned, “Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.” 

“You never did properly thank me for Hamlet.”

“I think you’ll find that particular pearl comes from Measure for Measure.”

Crowley smirked. “I like that one. It's funny.”

“I always thought it terribly sad,” Aziraphale said quietly. 

“Of course you do,” Crowley replied. “It’s a play without compromise. There can either be justice or mercy, lust or restraint. Heaven or earth.” He paused for a moment. “No shades of grey. No half measures. And you know as well as I do that things are never so black and white as all that. Otherwise, back in the garden, you wouldn’t have given away your sword. And we would never have made our little arrangement.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.” For the briefest of seconds, he thought of the prophecy in his pocket. An inkling of an idea began to tug at the edge of his mind; one of Tragedies and death sentences and walking in another’s shoes. He filed the thought away for later, and continued, “You’ve rather lost me.”

“No I haven’t. You think it’s sad for the same reason I think it’s funny.”

“And what reason would that be?” Aziraphale asked, though he already knew the answer. 

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall,” quoted Crowley. “And if that isn’t an apt sum of our relationship, I don’t know what is. But it’s different for us now. We aren’t bound by the same rules anymore.”

In that moment, as they sailed past the exit for High Wycombe, clarity hit. They were at the precipice, hurtling towards the edge, Crowley in the driver’s seat. And Aziraphale couldn’t stop it. 

“Don’t…”

It was already too late.

“I love you,” Crowley said to the ceiling. “ I love you, and you love me. Heaven… Hell… All of it be damned. I want you to come back with me to my flat. I want to get drunk and sleep, and for you to be there, with me, when I wake up again, because for the first time in the entirety of my miserable existence, there’s nothing to stop us.”

Panic warred with elation, and promptly won. 

“Crowley, please. Someone might hear.” 

“Nobody’s listening, angel. Not Heaven, not Hell. Not even the bus driver. And if someone were, they’d hear nothing they didn’t know already. We’re two sides of the same coin, you and me, and we’ve spent millennia spinning round and round like it’s all some great big cosmic dance.”

Aziraphale swallowed. “Angel’s don’t dance.”

“Bollocks. I’ve seen you do the gavotte.”

“Yes, well, I am the exception to the rule.”

“That’s precisely my point. We’re different. We’re not your run-of-the-mill good and evil, foul demon and saving grace, and I think we were always meant to be that way. I mean: why give us free will, or critical thinking, or the ability to do bad things when we’re fundamentally supposed to be good (and vice versa)? Why give us virtues and vices?” Crowley paused. He turned to face Aziraphale, glasses gone. His eyes were large and pleading. “Why give us the capacity to love if we aren’t supposed to use it?” 

There was a pause. A long one, punctuated only by the growl of the engine and the sound of laboured breathing. 

“It’s all part of Her ineffable plan,” Aziraphale said. 

His eyes were fixed upon Crowley’s. He became aware that his hands were no longer clasped in his lap; instead, one was traitorously positioned on a denim clad knee. 

“I don’t think there is a plan,” said Crowley. “I think this is all just one big experiment. An ineffable hypothesis. She just wants to know what we’ll do next.” 

“And what are we going to do?” Aziraphale asked, as a hand covered his.

Crowley flashed him a wicked grin. 

“Anything we want to.”


End file.
